Closeup of Weathered Brawa Signal Phone

Viewed from the back. The process for weathering this little item were already discussed in detail here. The novelty is the use of a 105mm Nikkor lens with the Nikon D3100 to take the succesive shots, using variable focus, that were ultimately "blended" together in Helicon Focus. The 105mm lens however is an old acquaintance, that already made some very special photos possible. Click for full-sized photo.

Finished Rock Test Board

One first batch of photos showing the completed rock test board. The reason for the delay was that the last element on the board was just recently completed. Aside from the stacking of variable-focus images in Helicon Focus, no other retouching has been applied. Click for full size.

Weathering the Brawa Telephone Signal - part 2

A wash of burnt umber (40:1 water to color) was lightly used with a no 1 brush and then another gun metal drybrushing was done as before, using the same no 8 brush. No image post-processing was done, not even the usual stacking of multiple images using variable-sized focus. Click for a bigger photo.

Weathering the Brawa Telephone Signal - part 1

Did a bit of drybrushing with Tamiya Gun Metal (X-10), after the 3 coats already sprayed a while ago. Perhaps another small session of drybrushing would be in order. Also i'm thinking of a rust color wash. The small bit of masking tape will eventually have to come off, since that big F will also need treatment. Click for a larger photo.

Tamiya Smoke

Today's snap shows the bridge on D that's under works. It's got 3 coats of Tamiya German Grey, and on the left half there's a coat of Tamiya Smoke applied. The 'smoke' is a bit glossy, but it does give that metal look and certainly brings out the details (in this case, the rivets), taking into account that no drybrushing has been done so far.

Retaining Wall - Take 1

Noch sells a nice stone wall, code 58200, 65 cm long, which seems to be just perfect to be used on one side of the track on PT in order to justify segment D coming so close. Out of the box it does look pretty good, but the stones suffer from an even color all around and lack of depth. For the first part, different washes used over selected stones should help, followed by a black wash to blend colors together and for the second, drybrushing should bring up just that detail. In the photo there's a section of this wall, treated with a couple of different washes of black (several months ago) and some drybrushing with Woodland Scenics Concrete in the left done tonight. On the extreme right the original look is still visibile. Click for a larger image.

Oil Slicks

After the new section of track was secured a couple of days back, lateral spraying was applied using an airbrush. The same brown+black combo was used (3 formulas consisting of 0.6 XF-1 + 2 XF-10 + 3 thinner) both for this section (2 lateral layers), a small area near the tunnel on PT and for spraying 7 tie strips (3 layers) to be used on D segment - with quite a bit of paint still available for future use. Before airbrushing however, the rail heads were oiled using a Q-tip. But as this photo shows, taken against the lamp light, the amount of oil was just too much. It remains to be seen if this aspect will help or I will just have to get rid of. The long weird paper hood on the right is just a temporary cover for the Viessmann semaphore signal.